


The Middle Brother's Tall and Slim

by cynicalRaconteur



Category: Cabin Pressure, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Post Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-10
Updated: 2013-01-10
Packaged: 2017-11-25 00:48:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/633323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cynicalRaconteur/pseuds/cynicalRaconteur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three brothers share a family sport, a non-stop marathon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Middle Brother's Tall and Slim

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to see the 'Martin as the illegitimate Holmes brother' trope with Mycroft as the focus' and that same trope in a post-Reichenbach setting, so I smushed them together and made a thing.

Martin punched in the number as angrily as possible on his sturdy Nokia phone, which was extremely angrily. The letter from British Airways crumpled in his other fist, the number scrawled on the back in biro contorting and obscured. He owed John Watson a massive favour for that. Again. He hoped repayment wouldn’t involve any eyeballs. Everything with Sherlock had seemed to. Martin swallowed hard, trying to compose himself before the phone was answered.

Almost as he did so, the ringing abruptly cut off. Martin stared bemusedly at his mobile, and was about to redial when it buzzed to life again in his hand. He jumped, almost dropped it, and scrambled to thumb the little green button before he lost his chance completely.

“Yes, Martin?” Mycroft’s smooth voice glided over phone static like it wasn’t even there. Martin rolled his eyes. Was there a reason the Holmes family didn’t say hello like everybody else?

“I am perfectly capable of paying for my own phone call, thank you,” Martin snapped tetchily, and hung up, then hit redial as soon as he could, knowing Mycroft could set every phone in a five mile radius ringing given more than two seconds.

“Are you sure?” Mycroft answered without missing a beat, of course. “Your finances have been…fragile lately. Perhaps it’s time to take a pilot’s job that pays the bills?”

Martin paced, feeling familiar irritation at Mycroft’s effortless, well, everything. It was alright for Mycroft: he’d never had to pay a bill in his life. He had people begging for the privilege of doing it for him, most likely.

“As it happens, I’ve just had yet another job offer from a top airline,” Martin ground out between gritted teeth.

“Oh my. How fortuitous for you.”

Martin could hear his smirk over the phone line. He gripped the mobile against his ear until his fingers hurt. “Stop putting in a good word for me, Mycroft! I don’t want a good word! I want to do it by myself! It doesn’t _mean_ anything otherwise!”

It hurt to know that Mycroft didn’t think he could get anywhere without his help. When he was younger, at the Holmes estate, he hadn’t seen much of the scion of the family. He remembered, vaguely, a tall, kindly, slightly chubby boy from when he was…God, he must have been about five. But that boy had gone off to Oxford and come back as Mycroft: Ruiner of Fun, Hater of Interesting Experiments, Lover of Victoria Sponge, and he and Sherlock hadn’t had much to do with him after that. He’d changed. Or maybe Martin had changed. Either way, relations between them had always been rocky and with Sherlock…

“I didn’t mean to imply a lack of trust in your skills-” Mycroft began carefully, but Martin cut across him.

“You always mean to imply. You live to mean to imply,” he said bitterly, kicking over a wastepaper basket and instantly regretting it as crumpled paper spilled across his carpet. He dropped the British Airways offer on top of the pile and left it all for later, when he wasn’t on the phone to the most dangerous man in London, as Sherlock used to call him.

There was a stark silence on the other end of the line, and Martin had the sudden, wild urge to fill it.

“You’re only calling me because Sherlock jumped off a fucking roof, and you know it!”

The silence took on a decidedly more toxic tone, and Martin felt his cheeks begin to burn. He’d surprised himself, really. He’d always thought swearing was vulgar and the sign of a small vocabulary. Fuck it. Compared to Mycroft, his vocabulary was the size of a particularly malnourished ant.

Martin swallowed. But he wouldn’t apologise. He wouldn’t let Mycroft push him into an apology. Sherlock was his brother too, and they’d been closer than Mycroft and Sherlock anyway. Plus, Mycroft had seen Sherlock practically days before the…thing. Before the funeral, the last time Martin had even been near Sherlock was his birthday in January.

The silence continued.

“Look,” Martin said, fidgeting. “I’m sorry for...for my tone, but you can’t say it’s not true. You’ve never liked me much. And if we’re honest, I never liked you much either. Let’s not pretend that just because Sherlock…just because he- Well, I just don’t want you interfering in my life to make yourself feel better. I like my job. Both my jobs. Er, sort of- Look, the point is, I’m fine on my own! I can do it on my own! I want to do it on my own, and even if I wanted help, I wouldn’t want it from someone who’s barely said three words to me in the last decade!”

Martin could hear his voice rising in pitch throughout his speech, but he didn’t care.

Mycroft left a lengthy pause before he deigned to answer, and Martin kicked savagely at the wall while he waited.

“Martin,” Mycroft said, enunciating very carefully. “You are my brother-”

“Half-brother,” Martin interjected bitterly.

Mycroft tsked. “Now now, little brother, you must now my now that this family does nothing by halves.”

Sometimes, in his more hysterical moments, Martin wondered if Mycroft’s entire personality was an elaborate joke. It was not possible to perform dramatic irony by yourself. Was it?

“As I was saying,” Mycroft continued, refusing even to acknowledge his own ridiculousness, “you are my brother. I may not be…demonstrative, but I do hold you in high regard.”

Martin felt the irrational urge to punch him through the phone. It wasn’t fair of him to change the terms of their relationship like this. Mycroft didn’t care, and Martin attempted to do the same: that was how it worked. Martin kicked the wall again, more than a little frustrated. He wasn’t going to be Mycroft’s back-up brother, and put up with is ‘You’re not quite as good as Sherlock, but here: dye your hair and wear a stupid swishy coat and you’ll be close enough’ attitude for the rest of his life. That wasn’t fair. Contrary to Overlord Mycroft’s opinion, he was a separate human being with an aeroplane to fly and a First Officer to beat at Simon Says, and he wasn’t going to be pushed around just because Mycroft had some kind of misplaced guilt about their brother’s suicide.

“Stop trying to bring me under your thumb,” he said brusquely. Then, in a reckless rush, he added: “I hate it as much as Sherlock did,” and hung up.


End file.
